


This Is My World, Annabelle

by marigoldcrown



Category: Buzzfeed Unsolved (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe, BAMF Shane Madej, Blood, Buzzfeed Unsolved Supernatural, Character Death, Coronavirus, Dark Magic, Demon Shane Madej, Demonic Possession, Demons, Dolls, Enemies, Episode: s05e08 The Demonic Curse of Annabelle the Doll, F/M, Hell, Horror, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Mentioned!Ryan, Platonic Relationships, Shane Madej In Love, Supernatural Elements, Violence, Warren House, european spelling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-19
Updated: 2020-09-19
Packaged: 2021-03-08 02:20:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,919
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26548153
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marigoldcrown/pseuds/marigoldcrown
Summary: Earlier this year, Annabelle supposedly escaped from the Warrens' Occult Museum. Here's my take on what really went down.
Relationships: Shane Madej/Sara Rubin
Comments: 6
Kudos: 124





	This Is My World, Annabelle

**Author's Note:**

> hfffffgggggggggg
> 
> had this idea floating in my head for a little bit, but i suck at writing combat OTL

Escaped. 

He couldn’t figure out how she’d done it. 

_“Annabelle Missing?”_ The headline blared out in its bold black font, though its impact was somewhat lost in the pale light of his dimmed phone screen. Twitter was bursting at the seams with frantic, excited responses. What concerned him was the fact that some people were already joking that it was the result of the episode they’d filmed the previous year. _“2020: Have a pandemic! Us: Okay, but nothing else please? Annabelle: surprise motherfucker”_ read one Tweet.  
_"This is what happens when Shane taunts demons."_ joked another.  
Shane’s eyes lowered in thought as he rolled onto his back, Sara sleeping deeply beside him and undisturbed by his movement. 

Was it his fault? Had his efforts backfired?

When Shane and Ryan left the Warrens’ Occult Museum, Ryan in a state of visible relief but still stammering with a sheen of sweat on his forehead, Shane had sealed the threshold. Nothing in that museum could leave. He remembered what he’d said to her. 

_“They say you’re the queen here, Annabelle. And a queen should be buried in a fitting coffin.”  
The plumes of inky smoke betrayed the doll’s growing frustration as he mocked her. Translucent, phantom hands, too many to count, slammed against the glass door of the box holding her. So close, he was so close to her, and she still couldn’t reach him. For centuries, she’d wanted to be the one to end him, to knock him down as the King of Hell. Did she care about becoming the Queen in his place? Not really. But this man’s ego was insufferable.  
Shane had laughed when the wooden crate rocked back and forth with the doll’s fury, and he could see the hatred and disgust she had for him in her void eyes. “I spit where you stand!” Annabelle screeched out as best she could. Her voice was nothing more than a whisper, made only from the soft fluffing of cotton. She knew he could hear her, but it just made Shane laugh harder. The doll was so furious that she could have wept. “Mark my words, Madej. One day, I will escape this wretched body you imprisoned me in. When that happens, I will find you. Wherever you are in this world, I will find you, and I will **end you."**_

_Shane smirked as he rested an arm on the top panel of the door’s frame. He was tall enough anyway in his human form, he didn’t need to make himself grow to loom over her. Shane’s eyes became fierce, vicious enough that they would blind any mortal who met them. “Listen, Annabelle. We’ve been here before. You couldn’t defeat me all those years ago, and you certainly couldn’t defeat me now. After all, you’re just a doll.”  
Taking both of the flashlights, as well as the video camera he’d turned off before confronting Annabelle (he’d persuade Ryan that the battery had conveniently died and then laugh at his friend’s reaction), Shane turned on his heel and approached the door. With each step he took he could feel them – the hands that reached out for him, the hundreds of souls that stretched up to try and latch themselves onto him for freedom from their own doll-shaped, insignificant, man-made prisons – and he brushed them away. He smirked as they wailed and howled pitifully, crawling back into the shadows to mourn their damnation, Annabelle’s scorn searing through their misery._

_“And this is my world, Annabelle. I won’t let you do anything to it.”_

That was the plan. It should have worked out just fine.  
He knew maybe he had gone too far in provoking her. The thing is, he didn’t really hate her, he just enjoyed tormenting her. Annabelle was an old “friend”, he might even say. But maybe he’d pushed her over the edge this time. 

_I hear you breathing, Madej._

Yes. She was searching for him. He could sense her wrathful haze.

The time was 4:33am. Perhaps if they settled this now, they could do so without any humans witnessing or getting involved. 

Shane pulled the door shut behind him and he listened to the soft rumble of the early morning clouds, and felt satisfied in their opacity. No street lamps showered the cul-de-sac with their neon hue. The silence of this space was perfect, and the more darkness they had, the better. 

Unfortunately, the liminal silence was rudely shattered by the barrage of hellfire that burst from the tarmac and exploded right in Shane’s direction. He wasn’t caught off-guard, say, but he didn’t have more than a second to react. Luckily, he shot into the air above the ground with wings as crimson as blood. They were slightly stiff and sore from years of being hidden away beneath his skin, and fluttered at softly by the torn cotton of his shirt when they ripped through it in his haste. Shane gritted his teeth in annoyance. This shirt had cost $45. 

As the flames burned away and shrank in the cold air, he made out the silhouette. A growing, misshapen, formless shadow with hands attached to boneless limbs extending in every direction. Submerged in her untidy mass, the Raggedy Anne doll expelled its parasite. He could see the glint of her fangs, feel the stabbing of her many eyes as she glowered at him. Wasting no time, Shane’s wings grew in size and he snarled at her, tongue forked and dripping venom, whilst his silhouette bore intimidating horns. He dropped to the road with enough force to make her form teeter backwards. The tarmac was warped and crumbled where he stood.  
The demons faced one another. Well, Annabelle tried her best to in her diminished form. 

“You’re late.” Shane said, his voice laced with an inhuman growl. 

Annabelle formed something of a twisted, sad grin. _“You look unhappy, old friend.”_ Her voice had managed to morph itself into something akin to the howl of a banshee. _“Aren’t you thrilled to see me out at last? For 40 years I’ve been in this body. You could at least welcome me back.”_

“I’m pissed because you ruined my new shirt.” 

Annabelle threw back her “head” and screeched with laughter. _“You fool! You’ve spent so many years here on Earth, you’re becoming more human every day!”_ Her amusement was suddenly cut short when she was blasted into the ground by a blast of nightmarish energy, conjured from the pocketed souls of unfortunates Shane had accumulated over the years. The force was enough to split apart Annabelle’s mass, leaving her disoriented, gawping up at the murky sky where she sprawled out on the road. A sudden crushing pain had her shrieking and curling in on herself. Shane dug his heel into the Raggedy Ann’s dirt-smudged face. He watched her writhe with a twisted grin as he upped the pressure.  
“I happen to like humans. They’re much more fun than beings like you. Why do you think I spend so much time here? I get the luxury of owning every circle of Hell, plus an entire planet to play with. _**Whilst you rot away.”**_

Without warning, Annabelle suddenly reared up with all of Hell’s fury, and she roared with such force that Shane found himself thrown back against the porch steps of a neighbour’s home. The solid, smoothly concrete edges of the steps dug into his lungs enough to result in a small puddle of blood, which now decorated the pavement. Shane groaned with pain and fell to his knees, plumes of dust billowing into the grass. The metallic taste in his mouth wouldn’t go away, and he found himself spitting up more blood. The drawbacks of living a mortal life on Earth, as Annabelle had said, included his body becoming conditioned to a harmless environment where he didn’t need to use his full powers. The closest he’d come to needing them like this was the time he and Ryan were in the Sallie House.

_“You are WEAK, Madej!”_ Annabelle thundered. Her phantom hands crawled along the disturbed rubble and stabbed into the air. She grew ever-bigger in size. _“Your time has expired! For the freedom you stole from me, I will destroy everyone and everything you love. Their souls will be mine, and you will have **NOTHING.”**_

Something fluttered in Shane’s heart. Something panicked and unsettled. It was fear. 

Annabelle couldn’t hurt him badly. But she could easily hurt his loved ones without exerting an ounce of energy. Sara, Ryan, his family, his friends. 

He had to do it. He had to end this now.

Gathering his strength and ignoring the throbbing pain in his abdomen, Shane drew up all of his power and when his wings flared out, the sky was split apart by lightning, and his footsteps, whilst feather-light in force as he stood up, came down on the earth like thunder. He spread his arms out to match his wings, smoke blooming out between his fangs. Claws bared, horns ready to maim, fangs anxious to tear and rip apart. He would kill Annabelle.

Annabelle swallowed up the Raggedy Ann doll into her writhing, oozing form, and her endless eyes watched her enemy’s every movement with devilish glee. She could see the pulsing vein in his temple, hear the blood churning in his body, meet the fire in his eyes. Yes, it would end here. She’d waited centuries for this time to come. The decades alone and trapped in the museum had given her the fuel she needed to exact her revenge. Shane Madej had trapped her in this doll’s body all those years ago and now she was ready to take away everything he had. 

By the end of this, someone would win, and someone would lose.

As the soft morning sunlight filtered through into the apartment, Sara watched from their bedroom window as police cars and fire engines parked and more people joined the confused and panicked onlookers. The road was butchered and crumpled like ribbon, lamp-posts were torn from their place and sparked dangerously, puddles of muddy water spilled around the shredded bushes clogging the drains.  
“I just don’t get it.” Sara said. “How could an earthquake like this happen so near to us, yet no one felt it?” Shane shrugged with a playful grin and put his arms around Sara from behind, gently resting his chin atop her curls as they both watched the crowds gather below.  
The pain in his chest had long dulled, his shoulder-blades smooth with no sign of rupturing wings. He’d discarded the shirt in favour of an old one, deciding it was best to just say he’d lost it if anyone asked. “Dunno. But it’d make a great _Unsolved_ episode, right? Ryan'll probably say it was aliens.”

Shane made a mental note to himself to post the Raggedy Ann doll before the end of that day. With COVID-19 restrictions in place, the post offices weren’t too reliable in their opening times, and it was currently stuffed under their bed. The sooner it was sent back to the Warrens residence, the better. He didn’t want Sara to be frightened or suspicious. 

That afternoon, Shane thought he’d humour the Unsolved fans a bit. In this miserable time for humans, the least they deserved was a bit of light-hearted spirit. So he sent out a Tweet.

_“I know everyone is concerned that Annabelle “escaped” but I’d like to remind you that our formal paranormal investigation concluded that her raggedy Bratz ass was straight-up weak sauce.”_


End file.
